Power consumption
We measured the power consumption of our entire test systems, except for the monitor, at the wall outlet using a Kill A Watt watt meter. The test rigs were all equipped with OCZ PowerStream 520W power supply units. The idle results were measured at the Windows desktop, and we used Prime95 to load up the CPUs.

As I mentioned in our testing methods section, both processors were tested with their power-saving features—SpeedStep for the Pentium M and PowerNow! for the Turion 64—enabled. Because of a bug in the BIOS of the MSI motherboard used for the Turion 64 tests, RMClock was used on that configuration to match the maximum voltage to the official spec of the processor.

The power consumption tests are actually very interesting. While it's true that the Pentium M beats the Turion 64 by a substantial margin under load, the fact is that typical laptop usage leaves the system at idle the vast majority of the time. At idle, the Turion 64 system actually comes in with slightly lower power consumption than the Pentium M rig. This result suggests that, depending on usage patterns, the Turion could prove a worthy alternative to the Pentium M in terms of battery life.